This museum has three separate environments. There is a public server on which copies of the digital objects are stored. A subset of metadata is included with these public images. Some of the public images are watermarked, and most are transformed and cropped into a postcard format to make them easier to view by the general public.
The key functions include:
Metadata is loaded into the internal server from a collection management system residing on a separate system. An ODBC based database link is used to transfer the metadata over.
Digital objects that reside on a SAN are loaded in and where possible matched to the loaded metadata. Multiple versions of the same digital object are merged together and then one is marked as the master.
A weekly job pushes selected digital objects to the demilitarized zone (DMZ) site for public access. The firewall is one-way enabling the internal server to push data to the DMZ. The DMZ site cannot access the internal server.
Internal users can use a number of web-based interfaces for querying the digital objects, as well as editing metadata values.
Public users have a JavaScript GUI frontend, which uses web services to access and display the digital objects from the DMZ frontend.
The public database has been tuned and configured for read-only that is of high speed.
A separate server running inside the museum contains a tighter subset of digital objects along with a subset of metadata. This server is designed for customer usage within the museum and is used within the exhibitions themselves to compliment the displays of the digital objects.
Data on this public internal server is pulled, rather than pushed. Database links are used to retrieve all metadata and digital objects from the internal server.
All access to the digital objects and associated metadata is done via web services.
